The European Union is looking into a fundamental reform of its migration policies, which have heaped pressure on some nations such as Greece and Italy as more than a million migrants and refugees arrived in Europe over the past year.

The EU Commission announced on Wednesday it wants to amend the current principle where the first nation where a migrant arrives must process their asylum request. The policy is a central tenet of the 28-nation bloc’s migration system, which has failed over the past year, EU vice-president Frans Timmermans said.

“The current system is not sustainable,” Mr Timmermans said.

Instead, the commission proposes to activate a “distribution key” to spread asylum applicants around the EU. That means each EU nation would have to take a set number of asylum-seekers, according to a quota devised by the bloc.

Still, a mandatory distribution of some asylum-seekers already in Europe has already caused serious frictions among many EU nations and the commission’s proposal to amend one rule was unlikely to change that immediately.